Personalized Baby Clothes: the button-front onesie

Personalized baby clothes do just what they say: give baby clothes some personality. Today, on day 3,  give your baby oodles of personality with this button-front onesie tutorial.

But you say: “Thanks, Erin, but  I don’t want to do buttonholes.  Maybe I’ll just wait for tomorrow’s idea.”

Hold up.  This is a FAUX button placket.  That’s right – no button hole making required; it’s fake!

Okay, now that you’re back with me, you can see that for this project, I added ruffles.  The ruffles feminine-it-up a little bit, but if you’re thinking of making this for a boy, just omit the ruffles and that makes this project even quicker and easier!

You will need:

• a plain pre-washed onesie
• 3 pieces of fabric – one piece for the button placket (mine was approx. 2″x5″), two pieces for the ruffles (approx. 2″x7″)
• buttons (minimum of three)
• coordinating thread
• needle for hand stitching
• pins
• sewing machine
• fabric scissors

So let’s begin!  Below is my fabric for the button placket.  Mine measured about 2″ by 5,” and I was embellishing a 6 month-sized onesie.  You may want to make your longer or shorter depending on your onesie size.  This piece is 1″ longer than the final length of the placket.  It is also 1″ wider than the finished width of the placket.  This gives you a 1/2″ allowance to turn under on all sides.

So without further ado, press the seams under.

For the ruffles you will need two identical strips of fabric, twice a wide and twice as long as the finished length and width will be.  The width needs to be double because the fabric is folded in half lengthwise.  The length needs to be doubled (at a minimum 1.5 times the length) because these pieces are for the ruffles, and there needs to be some extra length to give it some scrunch.  So as you see in the picture below, I’ve folded one of the ruffle pieces in half, RIGHT sides TOGETHER, and sewn the ends shut.

Then I flipped it right sides OUT, and using my thread and my hand stitching needle, quickly sewed a running stitch across the top (closing the remaining open side).  From this I gathered the fabric.  That means I had a knot where I started sewing, but I didn’t knot the end, so the fabric slides and scrunches on the thread.

See what happens when you scrunch it all the way?  This is too much, but you get the idea.

Now repeat your folded, stitched, flipped, and gathered fabric for the other ruffle piece.  Pin them in place on the onesie, and using your sewing machine, simply top stitch them in place, right over your gathering stitches.

Take your pressed button placket and pin it in place.  It should cover the messy inner edges of your ruffles.

Top stitch all the way around the button placket.  Then mark the places for the button holes, as I’ve done with my pins below.

You can see in the picture below that I used my zig zag stitch set on the tightest zig to make these “buttonholes.”

Then I sewed my buttons on top (you can do this either by hand or by machine). Complete!!

It sure snazzes up a onesie.

I think it looks totally cute with her little jeans and pink cardigan!  Of course, I’m biased, because I’m her mother!!

That wasn’t too hard was it?

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